Jim Shooter, the prodigy who began his career in comics as a teenager and went on to become editor-in-chief of Marvel, passed away at the age of 73 yesterday. According to writer Mark Waid, Shooter had been battling esophogeal cancer “for some time.”
As Waid points out, Shooter was a somewhat controversial figure in comics, especially during his time at Marvel. But during his tenure, Marvel published Chris Claremont and John Byrne’s Uncanny X-Men, Frank Miller’s Daredevil and Walt Simonson’s Thor — some of the most beloved comic runs of all time. He also introduced Marvel’s first direct-market only title, Dazzler, which was only sold in comic shops, and spearheaded event crossovers like Contest of Champions and Secret Wars (which he also wrote). And he launched the Epic Comics line, giving Marvel a creator-owned imprint. Still, his management style alienated many creators at the time, with many leaving to work for DC or other publishers.
“Jim was an excellent super hero writer, a character creator, an editor with an eagle eye, and a man who gave his all to what he did,” former DC Publisher Paul Levitz wrote. “From my perspective, he was far weaker as an enterprise leader, and unfortunately that was what he most wanted to be. His sense of history was not, in my view, as good as his sense of fiction. But what he did well, he did gloriously…and my inner child will always be grateful for his inspiration.”
Shooter was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania in 1951 and began reading comics at an early age. Although he had stopped reading them prior, a trip to the hospital for minor surgery when he was 12 rekindled his interest. He didn’t just read, but he studied Marvel and DC’s output at the time, trying to decipher what made Marvel’s titles at the time better than DC’s. If he could figure that out, maybe he could help DC improve their storytelling.
At the age of 13, he submitted his first story to DC, which they bought on spec and would publish after he turned 14.
“As an adolescent, he decided to learn to write comics and draw them, and tactically studied what he thought were the best written comics of the mid-1960s (Marvels, as written mostly by Stan), and targeted his pitch to what he thought was one of the most old-fashioned/weakest comics (DC’s Legion of Super-heroes),” Levitz said. “Ridiculously, impossibly, the first story he submitted was bought by editor Mort Weisinger, not an editor particularly focused on new talent. And even more incredibly, it was one of the best written comics on the stands that month. And he was 13 when he started this project, 14 when it was published.”
While this sounds like the dream job for any young comic fan, it took its toll on Shooter, even as he helped tell stories starring Superman, Supergirl and related characters. From Sean Howe’s Marvel Comics: The Untold Story:
For four years, Shooter worked for Weisinger on various iterations of the Superman mythos—Superboy, Supergirl, etc.—not only writing scripts, but providing cover designs as well. He also won the good graces of artists Gil Kane and Wally Wood by providing stick-figure layouts for each page. But as high school wore on, the allure of the money began to wear off—it never seemed to be enough for his family anyway. What mattered now was the accolades.
Unfortunately, praise was limited to the occasional article in the Pittsburgh newspaper or segment on the local TV news. “My father probably said four or five words to me the whole time I was growing up,” said Shooter. “One of the greatest men to ever walk the earth … but not at connecting with people. He made no comment whatsoever.” And Weisinger didn’t just withhold praise—he cruelly berated his teenage employee, calling from New York every Thursday night, following the weekly Batman television broadcast, with a litany of complaints: It’s not on time. It’s over the page limit. How the hell can we get a cover out of this? Why can’t you write like you used to? He referred to Shooter as his “charity case.” “He caused a kind of pathological fear of telephones in me,” Shooter once told an interviewer. “I felt more and more inadequate … and my last chance to be a kid was slipping by.”
Shooter missed 60 days of his senior year of high school as he continued to write for DC, all while trying to keep his grades up to get a scholarship. He did earn one to NYU, but decided to pass on it in favor of taking a job at Marvel. After a cold-call to his hero, Stan Lee, Shooter joined the Marvel Bullpen as an assistant editor in 1969 and moved to New York, where he moved into the local YMCA. His first tenure there was short-lived, as he gave up the job after three weeks and returned home to Pittsburgh.
After working in advertising and other jobs for about four years, Shooter would return to comics after being interviewed for the APA Interlac, which was made up of fans of the Legion of Super-Heroes. Duffy Vohland, an editor at Marvel, invited him to come talk about getting back into wriitng comics. Vohland also suggested he talk to DC, Shooter said on his blog.
“The next day I flew to New York and presented myself at Marvel,” Shooter wrote. “Marvel had moved to larger quarters, but they looked even more cluttered and used than the previous ones. There was a huge paper maché figure of Thor, donated by some fans, suspended on wires from the ceiling in the production area. There were piles of stuff everywhere–old comics, envelopes, books, trash. Two people were sword fighting with yardsticks in the hall. There seemed to be a lot more people, most of them young, strange-looking and dressed for playing frisbee in the park or painting a house, maybe. My tour guide, Duffy, pointed out a few corners where there were sleeping bags where a few otherwise homeless staffers spent their nights. Now, why hadn’t I thought of that four years ago?”
While Marvel offered him the opportunity to write Manwolf, DC would offer him Legion of Super-Heroes and Superman. “Without doing any research I knew I could sit down and write a Superman story. I wasn’t sure I could ever write a Manwolf story,” Shooter said. He took the job at DC, but said he regretted it, because of the formulaic nature of the stories they wanted him to tell. He called Marvel again, several times, without much luck. Finally, in 1975, Marv Wolfman offered him a job as an associate editor.
In the 1970s, Marvel seemed to be going through editor-in-chiefs at a fast clip — Roy Thomas, Len Wein, Marv Wolfman, Gerry Conway and Archie Goodwin all held the position in fast succession, but in 1978 Shooter was offered the job and became Marvel’s 9th editor-in-chief. On his blog, Shooter noted how “chaotic” things were at Marvel before he became editor-in-chief, both with the changes in leadership and in how things were run. Shooter’s tenure was marked by several notable changes that made the ship run smoother and also made life better for the creators who worked for them. Shooter implemented stricter deadlines, a new structure to editorial and cut the number of books being publsihed to make them more manageable. For creators, Jim Starlin outlined some of the changes Shooter brought about:
He doesn’t get much credit for this but Mr Shooter was instrumental in improving the lot of the freelancer writers and artists who produced Marvel Comics during his time as editor-in-chief: getting many freelancers onto Marvel’s medical insurance program, setting up incentive pay (royalties), making sure people got paid for the work they did. Though Marvel has since rolled back most of the benefits Jim gained for freelancers, there was a time when working for Marvel Comics was a good gig. That was Jim’s doing.
While serving as EiC, Shooter also continued to write, with two notable books I’ll mention: of course, there was Secret Wars, the major event crossover title that helped kick off the event book era (along with DC’s Crisis on Infinite Earths) and Starbrand, the flagship title of Marvel’s New Universe. Shooter had launched the line as part of Marvel’s 25th anniversary, and while the line was ultimately unsuccessful, Shooter and John Romita Jr. created one of its better titles in Starbrand.
Starlin isn’t the only creator to pay tribute to Shooter for what he did for freelancers. From Fred Hembeck:
I owe an awful lot to Jim Shooter. When things weren’t working out with his first choice to write the Fantastic Four Roast, he called and asked me to helm the book. Since that worked out nicely, we wound up doing a second project, Fred Hembeck Destroys the Marvel Universe. The real bad guy in that book was supposed to be Jim himself, but he pointed out that the Marvel bigwigs wouldn’t take kindly to seeing his name in the title, so he suggested I instead take the credit–and the logo. Well, I didn’t fight him very hard, and here I am, decades later, one of very few cartoonists with their actual name part of an actual Marvel Comic. Jim did that. And when he edited the Roast, he changed the dialog in one panel depicting Nova simply because changes to the character had been made that I was unaware of while working on it. That was it. As for the FH Destroys the MU, well, my favorite part of what was originally a 48 page book was a lengthy framing sequence starring Jim (as Marvel’s Editor-In-Chief) and his three assistants, Bruce, Clark, and Diana.
However, the book was delayed just long enough (my fault) to miss out on being published before Marvel let him go. It eventually came out in a truncated 32 page version with nary a cartoon Shooter in sight, which was a shame. Those pages–fully completed–are posted on my inert but still existent web-site. During the early eighties, I ran into Jim often as mutual guests at various comic-cons, but after leaving Marvel, I believe I only ever saw him once at a show. He was always friendly, and the two times we worked together, he couldn’t have been nicer. I’m very sorry to learn of his passing.
Shooter was fired from Marvel in 1987, but it wouldn’t be his last gig in comics. In 1989, he and a group of investors launched Voyager Communications, which would publish comics under the Valiant banner. They’d start by publishing licensed comics feature Nintendo characters and WWF wrestlers, but would soon add superheroes to the mix when they relaunched the Gold Key Comics character Magnus, Robot Fighter. That was followed by Turok and Solar, Man of the Atom, as well as original characters like Harbinger, Bloodshot, X-O Manowar and more. He was known to pencil a few of Valiant’s titles over the years, under the pen name Paul Creddick. He was forced out of Valiant in 1992.
After Valiant, he would help launch two other short-lived companies — Defiant Comics, which lasted about 13 months and Broadway Comics. (One of Defiant’s titles, Schism, will finally be printed in its entirety thanks to a Kickstarter campaign).
In the 2000s, Shooter would return to the first characters he ever wrote, Legion of Super-Heroes, writing about a year’s worth of stories for the DC title. He would also write for the second incarnation of Valiant, and oversaw and wrote for Darl Horse several of the Gold Key characters he’d previously launched at Valiant, include Solar and Magnus.
I’ll end here with a remembrance from Walt Simonson on Shooter’s passing:
In June, 1980, Weezie and I were about to get married. I headed down to Maryland a day ahead of the wedding where my folks lived to take care of last minute arrangements for the ceremony. Weezie stayed behind in the Marvel offices working on the adaptation of the movie, Xanadu, that HAD to get to the printer ASAP! I made her promise to catch the train, and then pulled Jim aside and told him to be sure she got out of the offices in time to get to Maryland. He agreed. When the time came, the book hadn’t gone to the printer yet, Weezie was still working furiously on it, and Jim went into her office to tell her to hit the road. Weezie, without breaking stride, barked at him to get out of her office because she still had work to do and she wasn’t leaving till it was done! Jim was 6’7” or whatever but he wisely beat a hasty retreat. Fortunately, the book went out in time and Weezie made it to the church just as the wedding rehearsal was getting started. Literally. And Jim gave us a really nice flashlight as a wedding gift so we could find our way in the dark. We still have it. Still works.
My condolences to Shooter’s friends, family and fans on his passing.